


That Bleep Means Up

by DestielsDestiny



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Droid rights, Droids are Beings too, Fluff and Angst, Force-Sensitive Poe Dameron, Gen or Pre-Slash, Grief/Mourning, Han was the best flirt, He taught the boys everything he knew, Luke is a sneaky BAMF, M/M, POV Poe Dameron, Pining Poe Dameron, Poe is kinda confused, Pre-Slash, Sad Luke, Soulmates, X-Wing(s), and chocolate, sorta - Freeform, there's cake
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-16
Updated: 2016-04-16
Packaged: 2018-06-02 16:30:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,980
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6573625
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DestielsDestiny/pseuds/DestielsDestiny
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Playing Seek and Hide with an Astromech droid may just be the best decision Poe’s ever made.</p>
            </blockquote>





	That Bleep Means Up

**Author's Note:**

> A/N: I own nothing. Title taken from deleted scenes for ROTS.

“Awwoo.”

Poe’s never much thought about the dialect of Binary that BB-8 uses. He knows it’s different from R2-D2’s, will never quite forget the awesomely cool and in retrospect incredibly funny sight of the galaxies two remaining Skywalker’s siting across a battered Dejarik table, whistling and beeping at each other with increasing levels of hilarity and error as a positively steaming faded blue Astromech watches over them like an annoyed Yavin Hen scolding a pair of silly chicks. 

Poe isn’t quite sure when speaking Binary became a thing, when Droids stopped being just something that were there to help with the hard labours in life, and became as living and breathing as the pilots they were bound too. 

He always suspects it might have something to do with the man who dropped by his parent’s house once trailing a sapling and a spade in midair behind him, sipping tea in great gulps from a mug that Poe made at Day School, which looking back had more than a few gaping imperfections, such as the inability to actually hold liquid for any period of time, and that probably accounted for more than a little of the aforementioned gulping. 

Poe sat attentively on the man’s knee, gripping a strangely hard wrist for balance, carefully examining every angle of the sapling quivering gently in a bowl of water on the table. He just about remembers the frosty glances exchanged between his parents when a gloved hand settled gently over his small fingers, showing them how to brush the leaves in just such a way that a soft trilling filled the kitchen. 

He remembers being surprised that his parents didn’t seem to be able to hear it. 

They plant the tree after Tea, Poe helping to wield the old spade dug up from his father’s one aborted attempt to reclaim some of the lawn from the surrounding forest. R2-D2 circles around it all, whistling and beeping a soothing counterpoint to the endless trilling that Poe will come to know more intimately than almost any other noise in the galaxy over the next decade. And somewhere in there, the man starts chatting back to the droid, and by the time his mother comes out to call them in for late meal, Poe has somehow learned most of the basics of Binary. 

Poe never thinks much about it, never thinks much about the way he was taught to think about droids that day, or who taught it to him, not until he’s fifteen and leaving for the Flight Academy and the man drops by to give him a going away present. 

It isn’t until Poe’s halfway through showing BB-8 his tree, laughing at one of the little orange droid’s jokes, that he looks up into the proud blue eyes watching them fondly, and realizes that he’s only ever seen one other person act like this with a droid. 

It isn’t until Poe is thirty-one and watching Rey trill happily with BB-8 that he finally gives some credence to the idea that Luke Skywalker might actually be the radical revolutionary the First Order always claimed he was. In some ways at least. 

Poe isn’t sure when he started viewing droids as sentient beings, or when the rest of the galaxy started to follow suit, but he suspects it all comes down to a certain sneaky Jedi with a penchant for black gloves. 

Leave it to Luke Skywalker to figure out how to change the galaxy using a cracked spade, leaky mug, and a whistling blue Astromech. 

\--  
“Woo-ho.” Now that did sound rather like R2. Poe jerks up from his crouched position with enough force to crack the shelving unit he was huddled under. BB hisses angrily at him as the trebling sounds roll closer. Poe shushes him quietly, “yeah, yeah I know buddy, I suck at this game. Come on!” 

Poe isn’t exactly sure about the precise rules of Seek and Hide, but since this whole game was Rey’s idea and he’s played enough Dejarik with her to safely say that rules are something she views as rather optional, he feels little remorse in flying the coop as he ushers BB out of the hidden back of the General’s closet unit, emerging at a full run into the Mess hall’s second dining area. 

Hearing running footsteps approaching, Poe huffs a laugh, dashing around the opposite corner at a good clip, and running straight into a soft wall of muscle and robes. 

Somehow, and Poe is completely calling the Force on this one, he’s the only one who ends up on the floor, BB hovering around Luke’s ankles like a smug little traitor. Poe is busy hissing his displeasure at the droid when amused blue eyes lock on his own brown orbs, the first smile he’s seen on the Jedi’s face in a couple decades tugging at the edges of his slightly trimmed beard. 

“A training exercise mishap Commander?” In retrospect, that hastily thought up excuse for why he and Finn kidnapped Rey from her afternoon training might not have been the most brilliant lie Poe’s ever come up with, but it was a rather spur of the moment thing. 

Poe isn’t sure who told Finn that Seek and Hide was a thing, although he’s strongly leaning towards Snap, but Finn began his game pitch by mentioning that games weren’t really a thing in the First Order, and while Poe’s played enough Poker with the former Storm Trooper to recognize the hallmarks of Rey’s careful instruction in manipulation tactics stamped all across Finn’s pleading expression, there’s more than a trace of genuine anxiety and something that looks depressingly like hopeful resignation in Finn’s eyes, so that Poe had pretty much said yes before Finn finished his first sentence with a carefully practiced pout. 

Luke’s full on grinning by this point, and Poe’s just in the process of opening his mouth to try to come up with some suave and perfect explanation for why the Senior Group Commander in the Resistance just snuck out of Luke’s sister’s closet, a sister who also happens to be the General, when running footsteps pound closer and Poe lets his head rest against the deck with a resigned groan. This is just going to be embarrassing. 

The yank on his wrist is surprisingly gentle, but either Luke has been working out more than Poe gave him credit for or the Force likes Seek and Hide as much as the next being, because he’s suddenly upright and moving at a fast forced march down an abandoned service corridor, BB swirling around R2 in excited near skips, Luke’s deceptively short legs propelling Poe’s deceptively also short ones to locations unknown. 

Poe clears his throat. 

“Master Skywalker, not that this isn’t all kinda commanding and hot and everything, but where are we going?” Poe’s about to tack on a belated Sir just for good measure, caught somewhere in a slight panic realizing that he just flirted with the General’s brother, and a Jedi Master to boot, when that dry chuckle that’s really honestly starting to get a bit annoying in its apparently smartass tendencies is abruptly back stronger than before. 

“You’ve been calling me Luke since you could talk Poe, I think it’s a bit late to get formal now.”

Call me Luke isn’t even looking in Poe’s direction, busy studying the corridor wall to their right, and huh when did they get so close to the hangar deck, so there’s no way he could see the precise moment that Poe starts to open his mouth to reply, a sly grin sliding across Poe’s features in time with his raised eyebrow because that tone had almost sounded flirty. Still, somehow he doesn’t have time to utter a single syllable before bright blue eyes are fixed once again on his face, that beard twitching suspiciously. 

“And that’s the worst pick up line I’ve ever heard Commander. I thought Han taught you better than that.” Poe doesn’t even have much time to process that because apparently this whole base has more false walls than even Poe knows about, and he helped build most of them, and that’s how Poe is suddenly stuck in a dark, four by five-foot space with the last Jedi Master in the galaxy and two rather smug, and suddenly rather silent, Astromechs. 

Somehow, when Poe was eighteen and deserted to join the crazy efforts of a mad woman to try to save a galaxy that had somehow found enough sand to bury its collective heads in in less than two decades, this isn’t how he pictured his life turning out. 

\--  
It’s the General who finds them in the end. Poe can’t say he was surprised, although he rather suspects that she only found them because Luke finally relaxed enough to fall asleep. And that’s right, Poe Dameron gets lucky enough to spend hours in a confined space with the man of his dreams and what do they spend the time doing? Sleeping. Just sleeping. And nothing else.

Poe raises his head groggily when light floods the disused supply closet, the quiet swish of the door heralding the sudden presence of Leia Organa, dressed uncharacteristically in white, which Poe realizes belatedly is just the hallow of light cast by the corridor playing tricks on his unadjusted eyes. Or maybe that’s the way Luke always sees his sister, as fierce and light and fresh as the day he first met her. 

Poe remembers his parents having arguments about Luke, about the Jedi and training and temples. He didn’t really know what they were talking about, they certainly never asked for his opinion, which is one of the few gripes Poe has about his parents otherwise excellent parenting strategies, but he’s landed enough impossible shots and improbable barrel rolls, won enough games of Seek and Hide and Dejarik with little skill and fewer strategies to have a pretty good idea that Force Sensitivity is something that doesn’t just run in the Skywalker family. 

Still, Poe’s never had much use for that extra little bit of something, besides being the best pilot he can be, and he’s been around Leia and now Rey for long enough to acknowledge that this particular manifestation of his unknown level of Midi-chlorians is something pretty much unique to being around Luke Skywalker.

Poe isn’t sure what this is precisely, but watching Leia’s face soften in slow increments with every gentle puff of breath Luke snores into Poe’s cricked neck, watching her brother’s mechanical hand rest securely on the top of Poe’s raised knee, firm enough to anchor but gentle enough not to bruise even in sleep, he knows that whatever it is, she must be able to sense it too. 

Poe had a whole rehearsed speech prepared for what he was going to say to Luke when they both left that closet, but somewhere between Leia quietly collecting BB and R2 and leaving her brother to the first uninterrupted sleep he’s had in possibly over a decade and Finn and Rey sheepishly presenting Poe with his winnings of Ice Cake and Caf in the Mess that night, he manages to fall back to sleep, a deep enough sleep that he completely misses Luke leaving their hideout, waking up with a thick blanket draped over his shoulders and BB bumping insistently at his shoulder, and really is Luke the most sneaky person on Base or can the man actually turn himself invisible because how did he sneak past the entire pilot Corp to get Poe’s mother’s quilt out of the cabin of Black One. 

Poe doesn’t see Luke in the Mess that night, and he’s more than a little unsure about whether he dreamt the entire thing, but he leaves his portion of Cake outside of Luke’s closed quarters door that night anyway. 

He never does see that plate again. 

\--  
Seek and Hide becomes a rather strange tradition around the Base after that, with everyone pitching in at one time or another. Poe never quite gets over the time he finds General Ackbar crammed sneakily behind the bulkheads in the Tactical Center. 

Somehow though, Poe never catches Luke playing after that first time. He isn’t even sure if the Jedi is on the Base some days, and the man’s always strangely absent from their impromptu games. Naturally, Poe loses spectacularly just about every time. He never says it, but Rey and Finn definitely deserve all the cake they can get their hands on, because really who grows up not knowing what icing is. 

Poe only wins one game after that, the only time he returns to their little hideout beside the Hangar, the one that he’s firmly mentally stamped as his and Luke’s. He sits for hours, wrapped in his mother’s quilt to ward off the chill of the Hangar doors, waiting for something. He isn’t sure what. 

He just knows it doesn’t come. 

\--  
The morning after the three-month Anniversary of the inaugural D’Quar Seek and Hide championship Poe is preparing to set out on his first deep space mission since Rey dragged Luke Skywalker back into the galaxy at large. 

He’s fitting on his flight gloves, helmet tucked securely under his arm, trying to convince BB that no, he really doesn’t want to come on this mission, because it’s three weeks out in open space buddy, and it’s just a glorified supply and info pick up run, and C3-H2 really is more suited for this particular type of mission, and besides someone needs to keep an eye on Rey and Finn while he’s gone, when a familiarly jointed and gloved hand finds its way to landing on Poe’s left shoulder. 

The one that was leaning against the hull of Red One, because apparently a black X-Wing actually is too conspicuous to take on a non-combat mission, about as conspicuous as an Orange and White spherical droid with an attitude, but Luke Skywalker’s X-Wing isn’t somehow. Poe had tried to argue his black curls and adorable smile were just as memorable, but the General had remained predictably blank faced. 

Poe turns his head, trying very hard to stay mad at the man he hasn’t seen more than disappearing boot heels of in nearly three months, except that Luke is currently perched on the red wing above Poe’s head, lying casually on his stomach, left arm pillowing a clean shaven chin with a familiar cleft in it, blue eyes almost seeming to reflect off the black of the glove latched onto Poe’s shoulder. 

With an effortless tumble rather belaying the age in his slightly weathered features, Luke lands squarely in front of the still slightly open mouthed Poe. Poe is rather proud of how fast he recovers in the face of all that twinkling blue. “Aww Master Skywalker, you didn’t have to get cleaned up on my account. The scruffy look suited you. Really, spice pirates are the height of sexy right now.” Nope, not even the barest hint of a twitch. 

Force, Poe hasn’t had this much trouble flirting with someone since he was Sixteen and trying to not get killed by Han Solo while getting utterly shut down by his wife, only to realize that they both found the whole thing endlessly amusing. Poe likes to think he’s grown up at least a little in the last fifteen years, but apparently he’s still no better at attempting to woo a Skywalker. 

Except, well, this, “This was my old fighter you know Commander. Flew her into my first battle, destroyed the first Death Star with her. She’s never steered me wrong.” Poe knows flirting is something he’s learned from a cobble of space pirates and air force junkies and as a result his skills are as hit and miss as his results, but even he doesn’t usually open with allusions to mass genocide. 

Still…laser light blue eyes fix on Poe’s, a wealth of understanding and hesitancy and potential and hope waring with each other to suffuse the dimly gleaming depths. Poe isn’t sure which emotion wins, but Luke’s hands find the edges of Poe’s shoulders, one brief squeeze accompanying a breathed out, “You look after my ship now Poe.” 

And then the hands are gone, along with their owner, as if they’d never been there at all. 

Poe goes through the flight checks on auto-pilot, his entire brain taken up with wondering how everyone keeps completely missing these moments of something with Luke. Neither of them are exactly subtle. 

He’s actually left the deck, entering the first Hyper jump coordinates before a voice echoes soothingly in his head, reminding him of fresh soil and learning Binary when no one else can hear it. 

“I’ll see you when you get back Commander. Try to bring yourself back in one piece won’t you.”

\--

It takes Poe rather a long time to remember that Luke learned to flirt from the same person Poe did. 

It takes him rather a long time to remember that falling for a Skywalker can be one of the most dangerous pastime’s in the galaxy, emotionally and physically, but that it’s nothing compared to being a Skywalker yourself. 

It takes him the entire three weeks of that mission to remember that Poe is alive today because Luke is the best pilot in the galaxy, that the galaxy is still here because Luke is the best son in the galaxy, that the galaxy exists anymore at all because Luke is the most selfless person in the galaxy. 

And that if they broke the galaxy Luke gave everything to save, then maybe its up to them to put it back together again. All of it. Even the fragments of a Jedi that wept while the galaxy laughed in his face, tore down the hope he brought and burned the ashes. 

\--

Poe doesn’t see Luke on his return, which is met with as much fanfare as a supply run ever is. Still, Poe is rather proud of the fact he gets out of the ensuing mealy with both his limbs and the Choc-Cake intact. 

He makes it all the way to the General’s office before his best laid efforts are thwarted by an enthusiastic BB-8 twirling happily into his knee caps. Poe is desperately attempting to balance what’s left of the precious dessert in one hand while patting the happily purring droid with the other, silently cursing his bruised appendages, when the door swishes open to reveal one complete set of Skywalker twins gawking at him in perfect unison from their squashed position in the narrow doorway. 

“Evening General, just reporting in, wanted to see if I could interest either of you in Coruscantian Choc Fluff?” Poe was trying for suave, but he suspects that his rather ungraceful fall into their legs moments later as he finally loses his battle to stay balanced rather ruins the effect entirely. 

Still, someone must have caught what was left of the dessert by that point, because moments later Poe’s sitting at Leia’s rather sparse desk, attempting to look elegant while stuffing Choc flakes into his mouth because of course he forgot utensils entirely, absently watching Luke Skywalker gulp tea from a cracked and weather mug with a bunch of suspiciously familiar holes in it. 

“Hey, that’s my mug!” Poe realizes belatedly that that came out rather loud, if the slight jump of the General’s somehow gracefully Choc smeared hand is anything to go by, but Luke merely calmly replaces the offending object on top of something that looks suspiciously like a report on Poe’s flight plan check ins for the past three weeks, leaking hot purple liquid all over the edges of Ackbar’s latest tactical surveys, and arches an elegant eyebrow, and hey, apparently the beard really is a thing of the past now. “Excellent observation skills Commander. Good to know all that time in the Black hasn’t completely melted your brain cells.” 

Poe thinks he’s perfectly justified in feeling horribly confused right about now, but he can’t help it, he throws back his head and laughs like he hasn’t in years. 

He doesn’t have to look to know he’s not the only one smiling. 

\--  
Poe wins fifteen games of Seek and Hide in a row before he and Luke are categorically forbidden from hiding together by the General herself. Luke calls his sister a sore loser in a tone more light and teasing than Poe’s ever heard from him. 

The General’s answering smile seems to light up the entire Hangar deck. 

Luke turns out to have nearly as healthy a disregard to the rules as Poe does though, but no one ever catches them, so Poe takes his cake and eats it with pride. 

\--  
On the sixth month anniversary of the inaugural D’Quar Seek and Hide Olympics, Poe collects half of the winning cake, BB balancing it between them with squeeling aplomb, his mother’s quilt tucked securely under his arm. 

They’ve just settled into the secure darkness of the supply closet just off the Hangar deck when the door swishes open to reveal Luke and R2, the other half of the cake balanced between them, blue eyes sparkling as bright as freshly polished blue dome swirls. 

They never do get to the cake. 

\--

Poe suits up for the latest supply run faster than he ever has, rushing out onto the deck on the heels of BB’s excited trundling. Black One gleams brightly in the morning light, the Fire Blooms beside the edges of the open Hangar bay mirroring the blazing paint of Red One, noses perfectly aligned. 

Poe thinks it’s slightly unfair that, even with the return of that ridiculous beard because even Leia’s tolerance for risking the galaxy’s most obvious heroes in its most obvious ships with its most obvious droids has its limits, Force shielding honed by games of Seek and Hide or not, Luke still manages to look ridiculously good in that orange flight suit. 

Poe’s still standing open mouthed when Luke takes the opportunity to steal a quick kiss on the lips, flipping effortlessly into the cockpit of Black One even as Poe is left to scramble into Red One, squawking with undignified protest at the tricks of sneaky so not old Jedi. 

They take off at the same time, shooting into the lower atmosphere with an effortless symmetry that completely belays that fact that this is the first time they’ve ever flown together, in different ships at least. 

Poe turns his head to the side as they hit Atmo, the voices of every one of his collectively stunned past flight instructors echoing in protest inside his head, brown eyes finding blue across Dura Glass and space dust. 

The comm unit crackles with a set of stern squeals as R2 admonishes Poe for being as idiotic as Luke. Poe doesn’t need the Force to hear Luke’s laughter, even across space and engine noise. 

Poe’s hands find somehow familiar controls, resting comfortably in the echoes of the pilot that came before him as a warm voice echoes around the depths of his mind “Your move Poe.”

Poe feels a chuckle bubble in his chest as he flips into an impromptu barrel roll, R2’s delighted trilling mixing with BB’s angry squawks as the two ships move as one, slipping in and out of each other’s air streams as if they were designed for each other. 

“You’re on Old Man.” Poe couldn’t tell you if the words were in his head or Luke’s or if he said them out loud. He’s never been very good at this whole Force thing. 

But, as he feels a warm chuckle ghost past his ear, narrowly compensating for a sudden wing roll that takes them to the very edge of the Hangar roof, laughing in breathless unison across space and time, engines humming and droids purring, he thinks that they might just be doing alright, just as they are.


End file.
